It was just past 9 p.m. when I was summoned to a windowless room in a windowless studio to reunite with the Emperor of the Olympic Games:
Snoop Dogg.
He wore sunglasses inside and nibbled from a bag of Italian potato chips. He is taller than you expect, 6-foot-4. He’d just come from the speedskating rink, where he’d sat with another legend, Eric Heiden, and watched phenom Jordan Stolz collect his first gold in the 1,000 meters.
“[Heiden] was telling me, ‘One thing about Jordan, his close is better than his start,’ Snoop said, taking a seat on the couch.
What Heiden said would happen is exactly what happened. Stolz roared from behind to win and break the Olympic record.
“Gold, baby,” Snoop said.
The multiplatinum rapper was draped in a flag-printed leather jacket with USA on the sleeve. He rocked a pair of red pants in a way you or I cannot rock a pair of red pants. He wore a fur hat. He looked exactly like you’d think Snoop Dogg would look at the Winter Olympics.
I’d met him once before, at the Paris Games in 2024 . In Milan he is NBC’s roving correspondent and Team USA’s first-ever Honorary Coach. Some might call that a conflict of interest but it’s all just part of a Dogg’s life. Everyone wants Snoop.
I asked what his 25-year-old hip-hop star self would have thought, if I’d told him what he’d be doing now, a modern-era Jim McKay at age 54.
“That you’re lying,” Snoop said. “You’re telling a big-ass lie. I didn’t have the vision of even being in this position at that age. Never aspired to be connected to this, but always had love for sports.”
“It just felt like it organically grew into what it was supposed to be, based on the love that I have for human beings, for sport, and for the country that I’m from.”
By now Snoop’s transformation from hip-hop renegade to ubiquitous personality-slash-pitchman is old news. Midlife Snoop is the Establishment, a company pillar. As if to underline the point, he wore a medallion around his neck featuring NBC’s peacock logo.
Being on TV is intimate work, not for everyone. The people who are the best at it make it seem effortless, even when it isn’t, which is what Snoop does. Alliteration and memorable one liners roll off him, like when he told NBC host Mike Tirico that skater Ilia Malinin’s scores were “off the FM dial.”
“Like 108-something,” he said.
Snoop said he struggled with TV at first. He didn’t want to look into the camera.
“I was so unsure of myself,” he said. “Once I figured out that it isn’t about the camera, it’s about me mastering who I am…I’m always going to be me, and when the camera catches it, it catches the magic I live with every day.”
He is suited for what the medium has become. It’s no longer sufficient to rely on game coverage and fireside chats from the studio. The TV business has been atomized into a thousand tiny pieces—clips, blips, YouTubes, TikToks. Snoop is good at all of it. The Dogg conquers content.
In his role as honorary coach, Snoop said his role was to mentor and inspire U.S. athletes. He’d been to tons of places already. He’d gone to the Olympic Village, ice hockey, speedskating and curling. He’d dropped in on Quad God Malinin and the NHL moonlighters. He was in the stands when Lindsey Vonn crashed out in the downhill.
“That’s what it’s about, being there for people,” he said.
These Olympians, almost none of them were alive when Snoop broke into music, the lithe kid from Long Beach alongside Dr. Dre. He found himself relating just as well to their parents.
“The parents are more my age,” he said. “It’s like we grew up together.”
His schedule for Milan Cortina was relentless—rinks to mountains, he was endlessly on the go. The time difference back to the States was no joke. I asked him: What time do you hit the hay?
“Hit the hay?” Snoop asked. “I hit the hay all day. I was trying to hit the hay before you came in.”
He chuckled. “But as far as going to sleep, let’s say for example: If my day tomorrow starts at 10 a.m. and we have to leave the hotel by 11 a.m., I won’t go to bed til 9:30 a.m.”
One of Snoop’s colleagues in the room nodded. Snoop wasn’t getting a ton of sleep.
“I’m trying to outwork the contract,” Snoop said. “I’m trying to outwork the people. I’m trying to outwork me.”
He would do these Games and then LA 2028 would be next, in his hometown. Snoop will be a huge deal there, but honestly, he’s a huge deal everywhere.
Was there anywhere on Earth he could go, relax and just be Snoop?
“Bora Bora,” he said. “I’m going there when I leave here.”
People left Snoop alone in Bora Bora? He nodded.
“I could be Snoop Dogg underwater,” he said. “I could be Snoop Dogg on the beach. Snoop Dogg on a boat. I don’t have to worry about anybody bothering me. The animals don’t go crazy when they see me. The underwater world loves me. They don’t want pictures. They don’t want my time.”
“They just want to enjoy me,” Snoop Dogg said. Then he was off again, to talk to the world.
